Historians: Past Eras Were Worse Than Now

[Dr Doran]

The quality of life for the average person today is without a doubt infinitely better than any other time period in history. We've become so conditioned to the comfort and ease of modern life that we'd be hard pressed to handle something on the scale of the Great Depression, World War Two or heaven forbid another Civil War. I was in New Orleans less than two weeks after Katrina hit. It was really bad for a lot of people in more places than the Superdome. There are still places that haven't fully recovered and will never be the same. Although it was bad it still wasn't as bad as the Hurricane that wiped out Galveston, Texas in 1900. I don't think the survivors in 1900 were given a Red Cross cash cards or a FEMA Trailer. We just don't know how fortunate we are to be living in this era.

Rooster may be on to something too...

I agree completely. However, if we lived in the past without knowledge of the comforts-to-be, we might have a more resigned attitude and be able to deal better since we did not know that CRAZY inventions like polio vaccine and anti-slavery campaingns and universal health care (in some very very civilized countries, that is) would ever exist. And people living in the future may look back at our time and say, "I can't believe those people had all that hunger around them ... how could they have tolerated that" or even, "those people had to deal with physical bodies that got sick and aged ... how disgusting."

 

[Dr Doran]

"Helena, ena poli orea eunecka..."

Eunecka I do not recognize. Heneka (on account of)? The -ck- thing does not occur in ancient Greek. Nor can I immediately place the quote. Please say more ...

 

[Joie DeVive]

The quality of life for the average person today is without a doubt infinitely better than any other time period in history. We've become so conditioned to the comfort and ease of modern life that we'd be hard pressed to handle something on the scale of the Great Depression, World War Two or heaven forbid another Civil War.

I really have to agree with you on this. While I will acknowledge that things are relative, and that people were used to things that we can't imagine, the leaps forward in just the last hundred years are staggering.

Let's take for example, my parents. They were born in the early 1940s. At some point in their lives, both of my parents lived in homes without indoor plumbing. Imagine having to get fully dressed in the middle of the night, in winter, to hike out to the outhouse... Or the alternative, which was a potty under the bed that the lady of the house got to clean out the next day. I bet Grandma like that chore!

My Father was one of seven children. With no indoor plumbing, they bathed once a week. My Grandpa would spend the evening hauling in buckets of water to be heated on the stove for bathing. They started with the cleanest kids first and shared the water. It would have taken too much time and fuel to wash individually. Are we having fun yet?

Kids got measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox. Some little boys ended up sterile from the mumps, and a others died from these diseases. Parents feared the summer months because it meant the threat of the dreaded disease, polio, which crippled many children. My childhood pediatrician had it. He had the use of only one hand, walked with a severe limp and had a speech impediment, and he was one of the lucky ones. Unlucky ones ended up in iron lungs which were the equivalent of modern day life support, because their lungs ceased functioning.

Let's keep in mind, the time period I am talking about is the 1940s and 1950s. That isn't all that long ago, and I haven't even scratched the surface of what hardships were common. Don't get me wrong, I have an admiration of the era and it's styles. I have even a greater admiration of the people who lived then. I love my parent's and grandparent's stories. I love telling them. I am amazed by their resourcefulness, thriftiness, and fortitude.

I think that the past was tougher. I sure as heck wouldn't want to live in the past. Compared to my grandparents, I am a soft, spoiled, whiner, and I know it.

 

[Dr Doran]

The events in which we think of when thinking about the past are the highlights. Football commentators give the highlights, only a true historian will tell it all (if all of the facts exist). We are evolving, not de-evolving.

There isn't enough time to tell it all. Moreover, there aren't enough sources to know it all in order that one may tell it all. The facts exist. The question is whether they were recorded and whether the transcription is still extant.

 

[Harp]

Eunecka I do not recognize. Heneka (on account of)? The -ck- thing does not occur in ancient Greek. Nor can I immediately place the quote. Please say more ...

Signomi; neoelinika.

 

[Dr Doran]

Signomi; neoelinika.

Oh, I don't know modern Greek, sorry. ONLY CLASSICAL.
I will probably do The American School in Athens for the school year of fall 2008 and spring 2009. I'll surely learn modern greek at that point.

 

[Fletch]

Exactly. That's why subjectivity is dangerous. It is misleading to oneself and to others.

That may be why people who very strongly believe something subjective often "convert" it to "objective" status - because they really don't believe they're misleading themselves.

Such beliefs can be even MORE dangerous. For example: the end of days is coming, so I'm getting mine (materially, familially, spiritually), and everybody and everything else can go hang.

 

[Dr Doran]

That may be why people who very strongly believe something subjective often "convert" it to "objective" status - because they really don't believe they're misleading themselves.

Such beliefs can be even MORE dangerous. For example: the end of days is coming, so I'm getting mine (materially, familially, spiritually), and everybody and everything else can go hang.

An entirely separate issue, as you note, but I agree it is also dangerous. Apres moi, c'est le deluge.

 

[Harp]

Oh, I don't know modern Greek, sorry. ONLY CLASSICAL.
I will probably do The American School in Athens for the school year of fall 2008 and spring 2009. I'll surely learn modern greek at that point.

If I'm in Athens then, we'll have to close a taverna or two in Glyfada.

 

[Dr Doran]

If I'm in Athens then, we'll have to close a taverna or two in Glyfada.

Not a problem!

 

[HungaryTom]

"It's an issue of perspective”

I agree with that statement – different times - different lifestyles.
Surely people never had such material welfare and medication as today-in the welfare societies.
Also such access to information and education.
But you can’t say people were never happier than today.
Older times: less visuality-more poetry and reciting stories, songs, dances, rituals etc. by heart – more DIY of ALL things around you, smaller communities-more socializing, less mobility, less technology, more biodiversity.

Even today humanity lives in lots of lifestyles and in peace and war alike.

People and their surviving instincts are tested more in such extreme situations-that is what seems from accounts of elder people whom I know and I am not talking about soldiers in arms but unarmed young ladies and children in the middle of the war and the follow-up famine and extreme poverty.

I am NOT a historian - just like history.

 

[Miss Brill]

I always say bring on the nuclear holocaust because people are so rotten & they are meaner than they've even been, then I remember stuff like the cat bonfires they used to have in the 1600s & I realize people have always been hideous.

 

[Story]

The "Good Old Days" weren't.

.
The modern media has brought it all home in living, visceral colour...

The human race has always been burdened with a background level of chaos directly linked to the size of the population: if you have x billion on the planet and y chaotic events, then when the population increases to 2x billion the events will become 2y. It's when chaotic events start to spike above this background level that civilization has to tread carefully or suffer an emotionally significant shift (eg: the Dark Ages, the 30 Years War, etc).

As mentioned elsewhere, the speed of media transmissions combined with the media's penchant for sensationalism has created a false impression of chaos spiking.

Like George Santayana said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it".

 

[Dr Doran]

I always say bring on the nuclear holocaust because people are so rotten & they are meaner than they've even been, then I remember stuff like the cat bonfires they used to have in the 1600s & I realize people have always been hideous.

Yikes! I hope you don't really want a holocaust. Besides, nuclear annihilation might only be localized. Vaporize 100 or so cities and you still have billions of people alive; probably suffering but alive. It would be a great deal of work to kill everyone on the planet. I don't know if it could be practically done. A horrible prospect.

People have been hideous, but they have also been amazing. Look at the existence of public libraries. A truly wonderful concept. Listen to Mozart's Requiem. Look at the Cathedral of Chartres (IN PERSON ONLY - not in photos goddamit) or the Library of Kelsos at Ephesos.

Slavery, war, human sacrifice, murder, the slaughter of the entire male population of cities and enslavement of the females and children, torture, theft, scalpings, and persecution are age-old and natural. Some of the oldest hominid bones we have found have breaks in the skulls caused not by falls but by weapons. Weapons made by other people. Any time these things do NOT happen, I am very impressed.

There is plenty of ugliness but there are some astounding things, too. The disappearance of slavery on large tracts of the earth's surface is a stunning and very very real accomplishment. Now slavery is shameful; it was once (such as the ancient mediterranean, among many or all other times and places) "just the way things are." The existence of free public education in many countries: fantastic. Universal literacy in many countries. Machines to free us from needing 95% of the population to live their lives daily staring at the hindquarters of an ox going back and forth in a field pulling a plow. Increased trade networks for the exchange of goods almost anywhere. Pills to free people from having children when they don't want to. Erosion of divine rights and monarchical rule in favor of the masses having a say in the direction of their government. We still have plenty of problems, but I'm a professional historian (well, still in grad school), and I must say I'm more impressed than depressed.